Santa Clara County supervisors are on the search for a new site to build a health clinic near Mountain View and Palo Alto, a move that aims to close a gap in access to affordable health care for low-income people in some of the most affluent communities in the country.
Last week, supervisors voted unanimously to begin the search for the site, which would add the first health clinic in the area of Los Altos, Mountain View and Palo Alto to the county’s hospital system of three hospitals and 13 primary care centers.
The new clinic would provide both primary care and specialty care for residents of the area, which would keep north county patients from having to travel to a hospital in the southern part of the county.
The health center — which could open in four years — also will include family medicine services, including pediatrics and women’s health services. Ancillary services including phlebotomy, laboratory services, diagnostic imaging, and outpatient pharmacy services would be included within the space. The clinic is estimated to cost between $40 million and $60 million, and county staff are still identifying funding sources.
According to a report from the office of Supervisor Joe Simitian — who has long been a staunch supporter of the health system’s expansion to his district — the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center Hospitals and Clinics says between 10,000 to 25,000 residents in the area could benefit from expanded services.
Currently, the county estimates, 20,000 residents in District 5 are patients of the county health system, and more than 40,000 have received some form of public assistance. The county also says 39,000 residents also are covered under Medi-Cal.
Those residents are faced with living and working in a stratified community, where living costs are among the highest in the Bay Area and access to aid is limited compared to communities with a greater concentration of low-income people like San Jose or Gilroy.
In an interview, Simitian said there seems to be an “operating assumption that everyone is prosperous in a prosperous community,” but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“It’s tough to be a person of modest means in a more prosperous community,” Simitian said. “It’s too easy for folks to be invisible in these communities, and therefore not be provided the services they so desperately need.”
Right now, county officials are relying heavily on the Valley Health Center in Sunnyvale to take patients from north county, and that clinic is nearly “bursting at the seams,” Simitian said. The county also relies on non-profit health partners like the Ravenswood Family Health Center and Planned Parenthood.
The non-profit Ravenswood Family Health Center system — which operates three clinics in Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Sunnyvale — currently provides primary care for its patients, but referrals are often needed for specialty care, Executive Director Luisa Buada said in an interview.
Ravenswood Family Health Center acquired the clinics in 2019, when it merged with the financially ailing MayView Community Health Center which had provided care for needy residents in Santa Clara County since the 1970s but became increasingly priced out of the area in the 2000s. To this day, Buada said it remains difficult to expand the system.
“It’s about perception,” Buada said. “The proportion of need is so much greater in south county that people tend to not see what’s happening in north county, but they get lost when you average out incomes and housing. They disappear into statistics.”
Buada hopes that the county clinic will focus its attention on specialty care, which could play a key role as a point of referral for patients of the Ravenswood Health Care system in need of specialist services like dermatology or orthopedics.
Tom Myers, executive director of the Mountain View-based Community Services Agency said many of his clients struggle to make appointments in other county facilities. The agency provides services like rental assistance, food, senior case management, and homeless services, all of which can sometimes intersect with medical needs.
“The last thing you want to have to do is take two or three buses to get to a community where you can get the care you need,” Myers said. “There is absolutely a need for a clinic in the Mountain View area, especially for those clients of ours that need services specifically only available for Valley Medical.”
Myers’ agency provides bus passes to unhoused clients to help with long trips to the hospital, but he has also heard difficult stories of people who struggle to make it. He said putting the new clinic near CSA and other non-profits like it will help to give fast and readily-available care for the area’s poorest.
“We’re talking about people who are dealing with cancer treatment and things like that,” Myers said. “We take care of an unhoused woman who was dealing with stage 4 cancer who had to go from Valley Med back to Mountain View frequently. To try to do that on a bus is near impossible.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com